| JUST WAR by Lance Parkin |
| Story 46 Synopsis: The Doctor gets Bernice to reside on Nazi-occupied Guernsey in 1941. Whilst Roz and Chris help the Scientific Intelligence Division, Bernice witnesses an explosion and kills a German to protect her cover. The Doctor is captured and taken to meet Oskar Steinmann. Chris is sent to France, and finds a secret Nazi airbase at Granville, where Steinmann has taken the Doctor. They find former racing driver Emil Hartung has designed two stealth bombers that will change the war, though Hartung is missing. The Doctor knows one of the planes exploded near Guernsey, and he and Chris steal off in the other plane. Bernice is tortured but manages to escape and reach the TARDIS, where Roz helps her recuperate. After landing safely in London, the second plane is destroyed. Hartung died during the Guernsey explosion. The Doctor admits he inadvertently inspired Hartung to these creations. Despite forming a romance, Roz declines to stay in England. |
| Review:- A stirring debut novel that puts some fresh legs on a tired old warhorse. The central mystery is that of the new German secret weapon, and the whereabouts of mastermind Emil Hartung. But whilst Bernice finds herself on the rough end of Nazi hospitality, Chris plays secret agent, Roz tries to tackle intelligence, and the Doctor tries to correct a mistake... The book is well-written, and zips along nicely. Whilst the Doctor is arguably lucky to meet Steinmann and retain some liberty, and even more lucky when Chris comes along, Bernice fares less well, abused by the sadistic Joachim Wolff. It is little consolation when Roz captures Wolff and the Doctor offers him an exit. Roz's romance makes a change for her and the reader used to Chris getting the goods, but since her character is often unlikeable, the point seems futile. With hindsight, there are a couple of nods to her eventual fate in So Vile A Sin, too. The missing Hartung only appears in a witty flashback with Mel in Cairo, where she blunderingly tips him the wink about radar, and then clams up when she realises he's a Nazi. That this harmless interlude should lead to the events of the rest of the book makes a refreshing change, and mean this book contains no real sci-fi element, and is thus effectively a 'historical'. Steinmann and Wolff represents two faces to Nazism, though both have the same twisted ends in mind. As suggested above, it is rather convenient that the nice/nasty sides to the Reich are meted out so that Bernice suffers quite badly whilst the others seem relatively trouble-free. But the brutal occupation of the Channel Islands is not condoned and so the distinctions are easy to make. The nature of the mysterious Hugin and Munin work as a plausible extension of Hartung's thinking as it might have actually panned out, and it's a nice misdirection that Hartung only turns up as a charred corpse in a mortuary, one half of his twin plane plan already dealt with. The secret base at Granville is well detailed, and its later attack by the British shows that there are more likely to be shades of grey in wartime than simple black and white. The Doctor's disguise as a nun comes as unexpected relief after some of the harsh scenes beforehand, and his solution to the remaining stealth bomber being to steal it is quite neat, though the ticking-clock of Wolff's belief in the devastating raid on Southampton seems a step too much, though the unwitting destruction of RAF planes again illustrates the sensitive balance between the two sides at the time. Bernice's recovery might as well be magic for the effect it has on nullifying the trauma she had previously undergone, and Roz seems as keen to stay on in London as she is to returning to the TARDIS, i.e. not a lot. Chris and his moustache provide little depth beyond a brief flirtation in France, and he again fails to convince as a policeman of any era, let alone the 30th century. The Doctor is manipulative yet blundering, cunning yet naive, eager to correct his error (or Mel's) but too secretive to own up to it. His clear head during the Granville attack is a great moment for his character, and his cold words for Wolff are effective, too. At the time, this book received plaudits for being an assured and gripping first novel, and years later, it still matches those claims. |
| Disclaimer: I own a copy of this book. |